This special issue contains selected papers from those presented at the events Advanced Electromagnetics Symposium (AES 2013) & International Conference on Metamaterials, Photonic Crystals and Plasmonics (META'13), held in Sharjah-Dubai  (UAE), from 18-22 March 2013.

Guest-Editors: H. M. K. Al-Naimiy, A. Alu, X. Begaud, L. Daniel, H. M. Elmehdi, N. Ida, I. L. Lyubchanskii, S. Maksimenko, C.-W. Qiu, E. Rajo-Iglesias, A. Razek, A. Sihvola, A. Urbas, S. Zouhdi